


Fire and Blood

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dragons, F/M, Firefighters, Gen, Police
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8022472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Dragons were thought extinct for hundreds of years. Now that they're back, the police and fire departments of King's Landing have their work cut out for them dealing with the fallout of dragons migrating through the capital each spring. Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth just want to make it through their nightly patrol in one piece and unharmed.





	Fire and Blood

“I used to think these little monsters were cute.” 

Jaime snorts as he crosses the room to the small scaly form lying motionless on the floor. “Tell me you didn’t believe that Targaryen nut job.” He bends and yanks the tranquilizer dart from its back, drops the spent dart into a pouch attached to his belt. 

"She made them sound as docile as cats.” Brienne sits up, wincing as pain stabs through her shoulder. Her turnout coat is shredded, shallow furrows gouged into her shoulder and arm staining her shirt with blood. Cats don’t have talons that effortlessly shred three layers of heavyweight Kevlar-blend.

Jaime laughs, holds out his hand to help her up. “Clearly you’ve never owned a cat. We had one when I was a kid that nearly bit off my fingers.” 

The “Mother of Dragons” spent years tirelessly advocating for dragon welfare. Daenerys Targaryen was the reason they were protected by law, sedated and shipped off to Dragonstone to resume their journey south far from population centers, instead of shot and killed as they were in the first years of their reappearance. Somewhere along the line she forgot they were wild animals, and she paid dearly for that mistake.

Small bones crunch under Brienne's boots as Jaime pulls her to her feet. Dragons have definitely been feeding in this vacant office. The worn commercial carpet is melted in several spots. 

Brienne’s pack is somewhere near the door, where she dropped it when the little monster leaped on her back. She should have checked the room before stopping to reload her gun, but it was clear an hour ago on their way up from the lobby. This has been a very long night. Their reflexes are slower than they should be, and adrenaline and caffeine can only do so much.

A fluttering sound in the next room makes Jaime curse under his breath, and he stalks over to the doorway. In the pale moonlight coming through the broken window, all she can see of him is his golden hair and the white reflective KLPD logo on the back of his jacket. Brienne gets her pack while Jaime peers through the doorway. If he needs help, he’ll ask. Well, he’ll demand, at any rate. 

At the bottom of her pack, buried under spare darts, a half-eaten sandwich, and two bottles of energy drink, Brienne finds the first aid kit. She sprays her wounds with a strong antiseptic and prays that this wound will heal cleaner than the last one. She still has a nasty scar down one cheek from an encounter with a small black dragon last spring.

This is her third spring battling Westeros’ most dangerous nuisance pests. Thought extinct for centuries, the dragons have been terrorizing King’s Landing for nine years now. The maesters don’t yet know where they come from, or where they’re going, only that juvenile dragons fly south through Westeros each spring, never to be seen again. 

Brienne thanks the Seven for that. The juveniles range from the size of housecats to wolves. She doesn’t want to know how big the adults are. As it is, juvenile dragons plague the capital for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. They often roost for the night in vacant buildings, eating rats, cats, and the occasional homeless person. The first year they arrived in the capital, the dragons swarmed a professional baseball game, attracted by the stadium lights, causing panic in the stands. 

Civilians chafe against their sunset curfew these days, but they are happy enough to leave dragon hunting to the fire, police, and animal control officers who patrol the streets at night. The patrol teams divide up the city, tranquilizing the nuisance dragons, putting out small fires on their own and calling in reports to the firehouses to handle larger blazes. 

This year’s migration has been particularly long, nearing the end of its third week, and Brienne has worked so many patrols she feels like she’s living through the longest night in history. She hasn't spoken to anyone but Captain Selmy and Jaime in three days. All she wants to do is get some breakfast and sleep the day away.

Jaime moves cautiously into the next room. There's a flurry of beating wings, a high-pitched chirp, and the soft whoosh of Jaime's gun. She judges that the solid thump that follows sounds more dragon-sized than Jaime-sized, but for a moment she stops breathing, waiting for confirmation. Maybe Captain Selmy is right; caring so much about her partner may be more of a liability than a strength. 

Then Jaime drags a deep blue speckled dragon into the main office space. He digs his walkie talkie out of his pocket and makes a terse report to headquarters. A retrieval team will be by soon to pick up these two, along with the three others they knocked out on the lower floors. 

He tilts his head, sniffs the air. "Are you ready to move? I smell smoke."

Her legs feel heavy, her eyes grainy with exhaustion, but she nods anyway. The antiseptic spray does nothing for her pain, in fact it burns worse now, but she had no choice. There’s a clotting agent in the spray, otherwise the scent of her blood would attract more dragons. That’s the last thing they need right now.

Jaime’s brow furrows, his mouth drawn down in a frown as he watches Brienne gingerly settle her pack over her uninjured shoulder. He reaches out to caress her scarred cheek. “Can you hold a gun?”

“Of course,” Brienne snaps. She’s in pain, not helpless. 

He looks skeptical, but the smell of smoke is getting stronger. “Just checking. I still owe you a rescue.” 

Brienne pulls out her gun, grits her teeth against the pain as she loads it with darts. “I don’t need to be rescued.” She stopped the dragon that burned him from biting his hand clean off, and for some reason seems to think he owes her a debt. 

"But I do so love rescuing maidens,” Jaime pouts, then grins wickedly. “Then again, you’re not exactly a maiden.”

She rolls her eyes and pushes through the door into the smoky hallway as Jaime calls headquarters again to request a fire crew. 

 

* * *

  
“You really want to compare burns, Lannister?” Sandor Clegane barks a laugh and shoves another sausage in his mouth. He doesn’t bother closing his mouth as he chews. “You’ve still got your pretty face.” 

Clegane has a point, much as Jaime hates to admit it. Clegane’s burns are obvious, covering one side of his face, his ear a twisted lump under long, stringy hair. Brienne says that Clegane works with fire to prove that his brother didn’t win when he held young Sandor down in a campfire. 

Out of the six sitting around this table, four are burned. Loras Tyrell’s face is pocked with burns acquired on the job—hot oil from an exploding fryer in a restaurant fire. Jon Snow, sitting between Loras and Sandor, was luckier. Only his hand was burned. Jaime would worry about their competence, with so many of them burned, but these men don’t normally work together. None have families at home. They volunteer for this duty so that firefighters with spouses and children don’t have to. Jaime understands that impulse well. He started working the dragon patrols five years ago, when he felt he had nothing left to live for. He was cocky and reckless, and eventually it caught up with him.

Jaime’s still not comfortable with the twisted pink scars that cover his right forearm and the back of his hand, but he's not about to back down. These men wouldn't respect him if he did. "Fine, no more bitching about burns. But have any of you been shot?"

Addam Marbrand, seated on Jaime’s right, offers him a high five. Jaime accepts it, trying not to dislodge Brienne’s dozing head from his shoulder. Jaime and Addam were in the police academy together years ago, and it’s nice to have a familiar, non-firefighting presence at these crack-of-dawn gatherings. 

Loras laughs and rolls his eyes. “All that means is that you’re old and slow, Lannister.” His gaze falls on Brienne. “You should wake her before Cap gets here. You know how he feels about fraternization.”

Jaime sighs. Captain Selmy would prefer his entire crew be as chaste, sober, and dull as he is. Jaime drops a kiss on her brow and shakes her uninjured arm gently. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Clegane’s been eyeing your pancakes.”

Brienne stirs and sits up, wincing as she jostles the shoulder Jaime hastily bandaged in the diner bathroom half an hour ago. She blinks sleepily and yawns. “Did I miss anything?”

Jaime shakes his head. “Nah, we’re just bullshitting until the captain gets here.” 

Selmy’s request to meet isn’t that unusual, but they are all hoping he’ll have the news they’ve been waiting two weeks for: that spotters along the Trident have seen the last dragons moving south. For some reason the little bastards don’t show up on radar, so spotters have to actually watch them from move south from beyond the Wall and through Westeros.

"So Snow, is the Bonfire Babe still after you?" Loras asks with a smirk. 

Jaime perks up. Is Jon blushing? He knows the kid had a really bad breakup with some girl from the North not that long ago. Brienne had explained simply, "She was kissed by fire. It was never going to work out."

Snow clears his throat. "Melisandre’s not interested in me."

"Melisandre, eh? You’re on a first-name basis now? Then I guess she can stop asking if you’re a virgin," Loras retorts, cackling. 

Jon ducks his head, plays with his coffee mug. "She's one of those R'hlorr priestesses. Keeps setting fires, attracting the dragons. Goes on and on about Azor Ahai and the power of royal blood."

Addam steals a piece of bacon off Jaime’s plate. “If she wants royal blood, she should just go bother the king. I’d love to see the look on his face when she told him the solution was a hero out of legend. He’d put her on the first plane back to Asshai.” 

Jaime sips his coffee and shakes his head. His years on King Robert’s security detail gave him more insight into the king’s proclivities than he ever wanted. “If she’s hot, he’d pretend to listen, suggest they discuss the matter further  _ in his bed _ , then slip away in the night and never think of her again.”

“You shouldn’t talk about him that way,” Brienne chides, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Why not? It’s true,” Jaime grumbles. 

“At least King Robert’s trying to do something about the dragons. He’s up north at the summit right now.”

The rulers of all seven kingdoms are meeting at Winterfell this week. They’ve met every spring for the last five years, since it became clear that the dragon problem isn’t going away. But solutions cost money, and no one wants to pay. Robert’s Hand is in that meeting, Jaime is certain, while the King idles somewhere with a whore or two. Northern girls always were his favorites.

“Nothing will come of that,” Clegane says, digging into a cheesy omelet. “Buncha parasites, fighting over coin instead of doing anything.”

“Those parasites pay your wages, Clegane, in case you’ve forgotten.”

The sharp rebuke makes them all sit up straighter. As one they turn toward the newcomer walking over to their table. Barristan Selmy. The old gray-hair always has been too loyal to the monarchy. 

“Shove over,” Jon directs everyone, sliding over in the corner booth to make room for the captain. 

“No need, but thank you, Snow.” Selmy stops beside their table, leveling at his stern gaze at each of them in turn. 

Jaime has always felt Selmy’s disappointment in him, since he was a rookie cop given a plum assignment in Selmy’s elite unit, an assignment Selmy clearly thought he didn’t deserve. The captain nearly rejected Jaime’s offer to join the patrols, and partnered him with Brienne largely to keep the two of them from getting anyone else hurt. Selmy has little use for female firefighters and cops. 

“I have news from the Red Keep,” Selmy continues. “The last dragons have crossed the Trident, and the seven rulers have agreed on a plan. Maesters at the Citadel have found a way to push the migration over unpopulated areas, or so they believe. We may not be needed at all next year, they say.”

Clegane grunts. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Selmy actually smiles at that. “I’m of the same opinion, Clegane. I expect to see you all back next year, if only as a precaution.”

Jaime relaxes a fraction. This duty is important, and he’s glad he volunteered, but he won’t be sorry to see it end. 

“That’s wonderful news, ser. Won’t you stay and celebrate with us?” Brienne smiles up at him, ever courteous despite Selmy being nothing but brusque with her the past few years.

“Celebrate? No, I won’t celebrate until we pass a full spring without dragons in the streets. We still have one more night this year, perhaps two, and then I’ll need a report from each of you to close out the season.” Selmy looks at their tired, grimy faces again and grudgingly adds, “Good work, all of you.”

“Thanks, Cap,” Loras replies, but Selmy turns his back and strides out of the diner without acknowledging him.

“Well, that’s my cue,” Addam says with a yawn, tossing a few crumpled bills onto the table. “See you guys tonight.”

Loras and Jon follow suit, mumbling goodbyes and trundling off into the dawn. 

Without hesitation, Clegane scrapes their leftover sausages and bacon onto his plate, shoveling food into his mouth singlemindedly. 

“See you around, Clegane,” Jaime says as he and Brienne head out, but he’s not surprised that Sandor ignores them. Clegane has never been particularly friendly. 

Brienne’s rusty little car is parked around the corner from the diner. Jaime plucks her keys from her hand, and for once she doesn’t protest. She closes her eyes after four blocks, and she leans heavily on him when they reach her shabby building with its stained carpets and squeaky elevator.

He smells smoke the instant the elevator doors open, and Brienne perks up, poking her head out into the hall before moving swiftly toward her apartment. There is a slight haze in the air in that direction, and she touches each door as they pass, checking for heat. 

Frantic barking draws them to Brienne’s neighbor’s door. Smoke is seeping around the edges, and both knob and door are hot. Jaime can hear the fire crackling inside. “When did Hyle get a dog?” he asks.

“Last week,” she answers, backing up and aiming a booted foot beside Hyle’s flimsy lock. The door splinters, but doesn’t give way. 

Jaime pushes her aside and follows up her kick with one of his own. The latch breaks loose and the door swings inside, smoke billowing out into the hall with a rush of heat. Something small and black rushes between Jaime’s legs, yelping as it careens down the hall. 

“Call this in and grab the fire hose,” Brienne orders, pointing back down the hall, where her neighbors are starting to poke their heads out into the hallway. 

The smoke detectors in the hallway suddenly go off, their shrieking opening all the remaining doors. Bleary-eyed people, many still barefoot and pajama-clad, peer out into the hall. His last glimpse of Brienne is of her pulling her T-shirt up over nose and mouth, and plunging into her neighbor’s apartment.

 

* * *

  
There's a moment, maybe ten seconds after she pushes into the apartment, when Brienne is sure she's about to die. 

Instead of the bacon grease fire she expected or a bed charred by a dropped cigarette, Brienne finds fire  _ everywhere _ , whipped up by the wind coming in through the open patio door. And perhaps Hyle would be cowering out there, trying vainly to climb from his balcony to hers, if not for the bottle-green dragon currently slashing open his couch cushions with its claws. 

The dragon is a particularly spiky variety and roughly the size of a police dog, which explains the high-pitched whine that draws her attention to the mostly-naked man trembling under the small dining table. "Brienne, please."

Hyle gets no further because the dragon whips around, tail smashing aside a floor lamp, and locks eyes with her. Brienne snatches up a chair and throws it, dragging Hyle to his feet as the creature screams and lets loose another blast of flame that blisters and blackens the living room wall. 

The building’s fire alarm shrieks at them as they tumble out into the hallway, Hyle covered in soot, dirty white briefs, and sweat. Blood drips from a wound on his scalp. Brienne has no time to examine him as Jaime steps in front of them, brandishing the firehose. 

"It's a dragon," she gasps, and he drops the hose. Useless. The dragons spew something akin to the old wildfire. Much like oil, water only spreads it. 

There's nothing else they can do but run as the crashing inside the apartment gets closer. 

Ten minutes later Brienne is lying on a gurney, Jaime holding her hand, while an EMT cleans her burns and shoulder wound. She grits her teeth and lets him get on with it, even though the anesthetic is barely touching the pain. Hyle is inside the ambulance, bitching loudly about his apartment and howling like a child every time the EMTs try to treat his burns. The dragon didn’t so much as scratch him. He banged his head on his kitchen table.

The scene commander, a young lieutenant Brienne knows was only promoted a few weeks ago, insists that she and Hyle both go the hospital. Jaime tries to flash his badge so he can ride in the ambulance, but she and Hyle end up sharing and there’s no space. He complains all the way to the hospital, bemoaning how the damn dog ruined everything. 

He left the patio door open all night so the poor little thing could do her business on a little patch of grass he put out there. Because of course Hyle didn’t think when he decided to get her, too busy plotting how many girls he could pick up while walking the dog in the park.

The emergency room is packed, and Brienne finds herself waiting alone on a gurney in an alcove of some kind. After another dose of painkillers, she drifts in and out of sleep, alarms and raised voices filtering into her dreams. Eventually she wakes in a room, Jaime hovering nearby pestering a doctor with far too many questions. Brienne sends him out into the hall to call her dad, perhaps the only person more fiercely overprotective of her than Jaime. 

But her father is 500 miles away, so Jaime is the one who takes her home and tucks her into his bed to sleep off the painkillers.

Crying wakes her up again, a soft, persistent whine and something bumping against her arm. 

Brienne cracks open dry, smoke-irritated eyes and finds a black smudge haloed by white. A few blinks later, the picture is clearer but no less puzzling. 

Dark eyes, a scruffy little black face surrounded by a white plastic cone. 

"Jaime," she whispers, his arm over her waist twitching at the sound of his name. "Why is Hyle’s dog in your bed?"

Jaime snuggles closer. "Not Hyle’s dog. My dog.” 

The dog seems to know they're talking about her, squirms as close as she can with the cone on her head, licks at Jaime's fingers until he starts gently scratching the pup's head. 

"Jaime, you don’t have a dog."

Jaime yawns, disentangles himself from Brienne and the sheets, and scoops the puppy up off the bed. "She got burned," he says with a hard bite to the last word. “I found her in the parking garage and I took her to the vet.”

"Hyle won’t pay you back for that,” she warns him, remembering Hyle’s harsh words in the ambulance.

"I’ve never seen Hyle’s dog. This little nugget had no collar or microchip, and I like her, so I’m keeping her,” Jaime replies, carefully shifting the dog in his arms. Now she can see white bandages on the pup’s back, her bushy whip of a tail now singed and tattered looking.

“Jaime,” she starts, moving to sit up. Pain lances through her shoulder, and Brienne lies back down with a groan. 

“Go back to sleep,” he admonishes, shoving his feet into a pair of sneakers. “Balerion and I will have a little jog and be back to keep you company before you know it.”

Brienne snorts. “Balerion?” She wracks her brain trying to remember what Hyle called the tiny dog. Pepper? Oreo? She certainly wasn’t named for the Black Dread, Aegon the Conqueror’s legendary dragon. Hyle wasn’t that imaginative. 

Jaime shrugs. “She freaked out and crapped in my car. Also bit the hell out of my hand, so let’s hope her mouth is cleaner than her namesake’s. I’d rather not lose this hand.”

“So dramatic,” Brienne teases with a yawn. “I got burned by a dragon. You were nipped by a puppy.” She sighs. “Jaime, you can’t rescue every damsel in distress. You can’t really mean to keep her.”

He scowls, holds the squirmy little dog up until they’re face to face. Cairn terrier, maybe. Under the edge of the cone, Brienne can see a new red collar, a shiny gold name tag attached. Balerion licks his nose, then his cheek, the plastic cone bumping against his forehead. They look ridiculous, and frankly adorable. The pup whines again, and Jaime relents, setting her down.

Balerion trots off toward the living room, bandaged tail waving like a white flag behind her.

“I kept you, and you’re far more work.” Jaime smirks, his eyes dancing with mischief. The first time Brienne invited him over, Hyle knocked on her door asking her out to dinner like he did at least twice a week. Jaime slid in beside her at the door, his arm around her and his hand resting possessively on her hip. They ended up in bed that night, and most nights since.

Brienne gropes for something to toss at Jaime’s head and comes up empty. “If you’re comparing me to the dog, you can sleep on the couch tonight.”

Jaime’s smirk fades, his eyes softening as he looks at Brienne. The way he looks at her never gets old, never ceases to surprise her. A sudden sharp yip sounds from the living room. “Let me take Balerion out before she makes a mess, and then we can talk now that you’re not dopey from the meds.”  

Brienne’s burns are starting to hurt again, so she concedes the point. If Jaime wants to keep the dog, that’s his problem. But that reminds her what he said. “When did you have time to go to the vet?”

Jaime’s posture stiffens and he crosses his arms. “I couldn’t leave her in the garage. I was going to drop her off at the vet and come straight to you, but when I called the hospital they wouldn’t tell me anything. The nurse said I couldn’t see you, because I’m not family. So I stayed with Balerion until your dad called and sorted things out.” 

“You are my family,” she says impulsively, knowing how rocky his family relationships are, and how much love and loyalty he has to give. Being kept in the dark when she was hurt must have killed him.

Jaime’s smile makes her melt. “Good, because you and me and the little dragonspawn are stuck with each other.”

“Really?” she asks dryly. If he thinks she’s going to aid and abet his impulsive puppy-snatching, he’s dead wrong. She’s completely immune to that fuzzy little face and singed tail. Mostly immune. Definitely not interested in getting up to take the dog out for a walk at all hours.

Jaime steps back out into the hall, and she can hear Balerion’s nails clicking against the wood floors as the pup dances around his legs. “Come on, Bale, Brienne needs to rest. She’s homeless, you know, totally dependent on us,” he croons to the dog. 

“I am not homeless!” Brienne calls indignantly, and then wonders how many apartments were damaged. Dragonfire takes longer to quench than normal flames since they have to smother it with sand and specialized foam. 

Jaime laughs from the living room. “Fire went through your wall, so yes, you are. You’re stuck with us. If you insist on chipping in on the rent, I accept payment in dinners and sexual favors.”

Brienne grumbles to herself as she hears the front door open and quiet settles over the apartment. The sun is setting. She should be going out on patrol soon, but she and Jaime are excused tonight. If Captain Selmy is right about the migration ending, this morning’s dragon may be her last.

Except for Balerion, of course. That thought brings a smile to her face.

Brienne settles back in the bed, closes her eyes and waits for the last dragon in King’s Landing to bring Jaime home. 

 


End file.
